The Real Reason Cameron's Not Allowed to Buy a Cat
by Vitawash
Summary: Cameron has kittens. No, really. A crackfic resulting from too much time looking at LOLCats. Chase/Cameron.


**Day 1, 7 AM **

That particular Tuesday had seemed very promising when Chase woke up that morning. For one thing, there was sex, and that always boded well for the rest of the day. For another, there would be only a few more mornings where he woke up and saw that particular crack in the ceiling, because on Saturday he and Cameron were moving into a new apartment together. His books were packed away in boxes, Cameron's pots and pans were crated in the living room.

If he'd known that Cameron would actually go looking for healthy cereal for breakfast, he would have bought some ahead of time. However, since his mind was plainly somewhere else when she got up, it didn't occur to him to tell her not to go looking in the second cabinet from the left. Actually, he would have needed to say it was in the second cabinet from the right, because telling Cameron not to look in a certain cabinet would have been like putting neon arrows screaming "OPEN ME" on the door.

"CHASE!"

He fell out of bed and went running for the kitchen, trailing bedsheets behind him.

Cameron was in the kitchen, surrounded by bags of cereal. Oh, dear. She had opened _that_ cabinet.

"There have to be thirty bags of cereal here, Chase. What the hell?" Cameron picked one up and peered more closely at it. "Are these...Lucky Charms? What happened to the marshmallows?"

"Um," Chase said, "Well. You see. That's the part I like best, so..."

"So you eat the marshmallows- " Cameron rattled the bag, "And waste all the cereal?"

"No, I don't, I use it," He scrubbed his face with one hand, trying to wake himself up to a point where this didn't sound ridiculous. "It's just...I use it more slowly. Snack on it now and then. Sometimes I feed it to the birds in the park near the hospital."

"The birds that can't fly because they're so damned fat?!" Cameron asked incredulously.

"They're not fat. They've just...got a thyroid problem or something."

"I just can't believe you're this immature. I mean, God, Chase, this is so fucking childish!" Cameron stomped her foot, scattering cereal bags across the floor.

He should have known something was wrong right then, because Cameron wasn't ordinarily a shrieking harpie who turned a moment of surprise into a massive relationship trial on a whim. No, any other time she would have called him a dork, and made terrible "magically delicious" jokes for the rest of the day. So perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised when she doubled over in pain, and looked up with a terrified expression on her face.

"Allison," he cried, feeling cereal crunch beneath his knees as he fell to her side. "What's happening?"

"I don't know, it's like this...cramp or something." She gasped, pressing her hand to her abdomen. "It's just so - I can hardly breathe..."

"I'm taking you to the hospital," Chase declared as he helped Cameron into a kitchen chair. Maybe they shouldn't go to Princeton-Plainsboro, but it was the closest hospital...

"Chase?" Cameron winced again from pain, gripping the edge of the table.

"What?" He shoved a pile of junk mail off his coffee table. Where the hell were his keys? He had obviously driven himself home yesterday...

Cameron took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. "I know I'm in pain but, seriously, put on some pants first."

As it turned out, that was a really excellent idea, because Chase had left his keys in the pocket of yesterday's khakis. He got Cameron to the hospital, where the attending in the ER immediately ordered tests, including an ultrasound.

The monitor was turned away from them, against both their objections, while the technician scanned Cameron's abdomen. Chase noticed a mild swelling that had definitely not been there earlier that morning. Whatever was happening, neither of them could miss the way the tech blanched when she started moving the wand.

They knew too much about medicine to think that the consulting gynecologist who appeared had any good news to bear. He drew the curtain around the room, and after quickly introducing himself, stationed himself at the foot of Cameron's bed.

"Dr. Cameron, it appears that you are pregnant." Dr. Lee began.

Chase's heart was in his throat. He looked at the doctor's shoes, too afraid to see what Cameron thought of that, but he felt her grip on his hand tighten. Worse yet, Chase realized that there was nothing good about the possibility of pregnancy and the pain Allison was experiencing. Swallowing, he finally looked at Cameron. Her eyes were widened slightly in fear, but he knew from the determined set of her jaw that she was bearing herself up for whatever the doctor had to tell her.

"We aren't entirely certain about what is happening, but there appear to be multiple fetuses, and the development appears to be severely impaired. We believe your body is attempting to reject them, and since there does not seem to be any internal problem, it might be best to let nature take its course here."

"Oh," Cameron said quietly. Then she looked up, a confused expression on her face. "Wait a minute. That can't be right. I had my period last week. And I know my abdomen wasn't distended yesterday. Right, Chase?"

"No, it wasn't. Everything seemed normal until this morning." Hadn't it? He would have noticed, surely, if Cameron had been throwing up or going on crying jags or eating pickles with her ice cream.

"I'm afraid it's the only explanation we have for now, Dr. Cameron. We're going to move you upstairs shortly, so you can have some peace and quiet there."

As promised, they were moved upstairs in short order. Cameron, however, was not going to just rest, per doctor's orders.

"Go find an ultrasound machine," Cameron said firmly. "I want to know what's going on, and they're not telling us."

Chase briefly considered arguing with her, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. Stealing an ultrasound machine would probably be easier. There had to be one around here somewhere. He was pondering strategy when he found the Diagnostics team cajoling the machine away from a tech planning to make use of it with promises that it would just take a minute.

This is why, back when House had been taking suggestions, Chase had put in his vote for hiring poor, doomed Amber. If the tech hadn't given up the machine willingly, they'd have probably found the guy bound and gagged in the closet two hours later. He waited for them to round the corner with the machine and popped out before them.

"Need to borrow this," Chase said, trying to grab the machine from their grasp.

"We know," said Taub, "Word gets around."

Cameron wasn't thrilled that the ultrasound came with an entourage, but she knew better than to think there were any secrets in the hospital. Thirteen squirted fluid onto Cameron's belly, apologizing for how cold it was, and started the scan while Chase squeezed Cameron's hand, not sure if he wanted to comfort her or himself.

Chase felt sick as the team stared at the ultrasound. Something had gone horribly awry in the development. They didn't even look human. In fact, they didn't look even slightly human. And there was a rather prominent detail that the doctor hadn't mentioned.

They had tails.

"Whoa," said Kutner, "They kinda look like..."

Just then, Cameron and the monitor screamed sharply, and in short order the Diagnostics team disappeared in a flurry of room-clearing nurses and the obstetrician.

**Day 1, 11 AM**

Obstetricians had to preside over tragic events as well as joyful ones, so Chase thought the attending really should have been able to come up with something more tactful than "What the hell?" when the birth finally began.

However, Chase had to admit, as he stared at a furry heap of orange, black and grey creatures in the bassinet, that there really _wasn't_ an appropriate response to this situation. Doors were closed, nurses threatened with firing if the HIPAA laws were even slightly dinged in this case, and Cuddy was standing in the corner, pinching the bridge of her nose and hoping that the Weekly World News didn't get a load of this. Worse yet, House had joined the party.

"That guy should be fired, Cuddy. He was so blinded by his biases that he couldn't see the answer staring him right in his face."

"What biases, the realm of possibility?" Foreman looked in the bassinet, and shook his head. "Damn, they really are kittens. Always thought that was a figure of speech."

"Join the club," said Chase. Four kittens were sleeping in a pile inside the incubator, one with black fur, a yellow tabby, a calico, and the gray runt of the litter, all with white bellies and paws.

"I hate you all so much right now," Cameron replied, which wasn't surprising as that had been Cameron's reply to everything Chase had said for the last hour. At least now she was sharing the love.

"Not that complicated. The lovebirds have a fight, Cameron becomes unusually aggravated over something, and then has kittens. Sayings have to start somewhere."

"I'm in the room, you know," Cameron growled. Her head snapped around as she glared at the nurse, who seemed to be sneaking up on her IV with a needle. "What's that?"

"Just a sedative, Dr. Cameron. This experience was probably very stressful. You must be exhausted."

"Some ketamine to wipe out the memory of giving birth to _kittens_ might have been nice, but really, I don't need a sedative," she said, in a very good impression of a calm person. "Where's my attending?"

"Psych ward," replied Cuddy, "He kept insisting his patient gave birth to kittens."

"Oh," said Cameron, craning her neck to see the incubator, which the nurses had left beside Chase. "Whatever. Are they all right, Chase?"

Chase looked at the squirming pile. The nurses had cleaned the kittens off and put them in an incubator with some towels. "They're...kittenish. This gray one's smaller than the others, but they all have four paws and two ears." He stroked the back of the calico kitty, amazed by how soft the fur was. They were really rather remarkable, but Chase couldn't quite shake the idea that they shouldn't exist.

The yellow tabby – clearly a troublemaker – suddenly let out a cry, a high-pitched, tiny mew that brought Cameron to wide-eyed attention. Then the others – calico, black, and gray alike – joined in the shrill, pathetic chorus.

"Must be lunchtime," House declared over the noise.

"Does she have to nurse them?" All eyes turned to Kutner with vague horror.

Luckily, House was in the room to say something worse.

"Don't be ridiculous. Chase is the only animal allowed to get his teeth on Cameron's apples." House whipped out Wilson's IPhone. "Did some research on the interwebs. Apparently you not only need to feed and burp those little things, but you actually need to wipe their little kitty asses. I guess Cameron could try licking them herself, if she's feeling maternal. She probably already does it for Chase."

When Cameron grabbed the syringe out of the nurse's hand and stabbed House in the thigh, the incident mysteriously disappeared from the medical record. It wasn't clear who was responsible for the Sharpie mustache, although Wilson was reportedly the top suspect on House's list. Also mysterious was where Chase disappeared to in the chaos.

*****************

Kittens. It was too ridiculous to be believed, even if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. And he'd seen it, and he was never going to scrape the image out of his brain.

Now he was standing here in the locker room, wasting water. Oh, stepping into the shower and soaking himself to the skin was a tempting thought, but also inherently stupid and pointless. He almost wished he'd done it anyway when Foreman's voice came booming through the door.

"Chase, there's no way you're in that shower. I can see your sneakers."

"You look at people in the shower?" Chase asked. He realized the futility of the situation, though, and shut off the water and opened the door. Foreman was waiting with arms crossed and eyebrow raised.

"Foreman, I don't wanna hear it. I just watched kittens come out of my girlfriend's vagina. KITTENS! Trust me, Peyton Manning does not have a pep talk for this occasion!"

"Okay, first off, you need to never, _ever_ mention Cameron's hoo-hoo again. Second, you've lived here for five years and finally made a football reference. Amazing. And third, you need to get back upstairs and take care of Cameron and your...herd." Foreman's eyes twinkled slightly on that last note, and Chase glared.

"I believe the correct term is litter. And _you're_ giving _me_ a speech on commitment?"

Foreman rolled his eyes. "If I didn't make pointless spiels about commitment, you wouldn't have a girlfriend. Now, look. There are some situations where you have to take responsibility. Where you have to grow up."

"I just couldn't take it – I mean, they started crying and they're so little..."

"You worked in the NICU before," Foreman said calmly.

"And for heaven's sake, they're not even actual children!" Chase spluttered, flailing in what he had to admit was a hopelessly non-masculine fashion.

"You might not want to say that around Cameron. She's upstairs trying to express milk."

"Of course she is. Cameron takes everything seriously. We wouldn't be here if she didn't take _cereal_ so damned seriously!"

"What?" Foreman looked at him like he'd just suggested that, oh, Cameron had given birth to kittens. Or something. "Chase, do you think she's not freaked out by this whole thing? That she's not scared? Of course she is, but she's trying to make the best of the situation, and that's what you need to do."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah. Because you have the attention span of a fruit fly, and you wouldn't still be with a woman who takes _cereal_ so damned seriously if you didn't love her." Foreman leaned back against the row of lockers and glared. "Now come on. Time to step up."

The only thing missing from their little chat, Chase thought, was getting smacked on the ass when he left the locker room.

*****************

Chase sheepishly peeked into Cameron's room, where everyone had finally been shooed away. The lights in the room were dimmed, and she was peacefully feeding the yellow tabby kitten on her lap with a dropper. She looked up, and he wasn't certain from her expression if she wanted him to be there.

"I'm sorry," Chase said quietly, "I just...freaked out, or something." He sat down in the chair beside her, watching what she was doing.

Cameron sighed and shifted, checking to make sure the kitten's feeding continued uninterrupted. "Considering the circumstances...I think a little freaking out makes sense."

"So...what do we do now?"

"One of the nurses had raised an abandoned kitten. She told me how to feed them," Cameron explained. "There's equipment for you, too." She nodded towards the tray at the foot of her bed. "There's formula in the bain-marie – droppers are next to it. Put that towel on your lap. It'll give the kitten something to grip." Once he was prepared, Chase plucked the tiny gray kitten from the warm bassinet. It started to mew plaintively and Chase's heart seemed to jump into his throat. He stroked its head and tried to hush it until Cameron's voice cut into his panic.

"Just put the tip of the dropper in his mouth. One drop, see if he takes it." Chase cautiously watched. The kitten seemed unsure, but finally swallowed, and took the next few drops with no trouble, his miniscule ears bobbing back and forth with each little gulp.

"Good boy. Girl. Kitty," Chase said. "How do we know which is which?"

"Not sure yet," Cameron replied, as she patted the kitten's back gently until it let out a teeny, tiny burp. She cleared her throat, and Chase looked up, still unsure of what the look on her face meant.

"Chase, I know you don't like to talk about your family," Cameron said patiently. "But really, I think you could have warned me about this."

"What?" Chase stared at her in disbelief. "This didn't come from _my_ side of the family."

"Well it certainly didn't come from _mine_," Cameron snapped, and the kitten squeaked. "Oh, I'm sorry, sweetheart. Just wait a minute and your daddy can put you back with your...er...pack."

_"Litter."_ He ignored "daddy" because somehow that tap-danced right over the weirdness line. "You didn't really try to express milk, didn't you?"

Cameron wrinkled her nose. "Nah. I just said that so everyone would go away."

Chase narrowed his eyes. "Seriously."

Cameron looked at him sideways. "Okay, maybe once, but I was relieved when it didn't work." She met his eyes and suddenly couldn't help laughing, and Chase grinned in return.

"I really am sorry," Chase said.

"I know," Cameron replied, her voice just above a whisper. They finished feeding and brushing the other two kittens in silence, interrupted only by the occasional mewling. The nurse came back to show them how to help the kittens eliminate, and then they were all returned to the heating pad, where they wriggled into a heap and fell asleep.

"That wasn't so bad," said Chase, as he gathered up the droppers, towels, and other equipment for sterilization.

"Good thing," Cameron replied, "Because we have to do it all again in two hours."

Chase's left eye twitched slightly. They might as well have a real baby, at that rate. Cameron had already fallen asleep when he finished giving the droppers a cursory rinse, so Chase turned his attention to the sleeping kittens instead.

When he leaned over the bassinet the gray kitten lifted its nose in his direction, so Chase stroked his velvety fur until it went back to sleep with its wispy tail curled around his finger.

"At least you won't need college tuition," he whispered, and hoped the lease for their new apartment allowed pets.

**Day 1, 7 PM**

Taub tracked down the former veterinarian who had briefly worked for House and convinced her to come by for a consult after work. However, he had apparently described the situation as one involving abandoned kittens, rather than a mysterious cat-human birth. Consequently, Desai looked at Cameron, looked at the incubator, and leaned over to ask Thirteen if they didn't really need a psych consult. Thirteen showed her the ultrasound, and Desai, to her credit, took a full thirty seconds before she fainted.

Once they'd revived her, Desai managed to sufficiently compartmentalize the information to supplement what House had dug up on the internet, filling in bits and pieces on expected growth, and proper care at home. That was going to involve some boxes, and Chase dimly recalled that indeed, they had a lot of boxes at home. Desai also established the sex of the kittens, announcing that the gray, black, and yellow tabby kittens were males, and the calico kitten was a female. ("Dammit," muttered House, "Wilson wins the pool.")

**Day 14**

After two weeks, nearly everything was in place in their new apartment. They slept in shifts, caring for the kittens and slowly unpacking their boxes. Chase had saved two large boxes per Cameron's request, since she had been spending time on her laptop, consulting every kitten care website she could find on the internet.

A couple of old computer boxes and a heating pad seemed like a comedown from the kittens' comparatively swank incubator. Naturally, they didn't seem to notice, and merely continued eating, sleeping, and growing at a shocking rate. They had doubled in size two weeks later, when it was time to take them in to visit Diagnostics again for what House claimed was a series of follow-up tests.

Chase tried to look inconspicuous as he walked towards the Diagnostics offices, but he knew it was a lost cause, largely because the meowing hardly ceased for a moment. Apparently, there really was nothing cuter than a basket (or rather, a carrier) of kittens, which was the only reason Chase didn't feel like a complete idiot toting them through a hospital that was obviously for humans. He was on his own, having poked Cameron to see if she would be joining him, but she had just looked at him blearily and drifted right back to sleep.

"Appointment" was sort of a loosely termed phrase in Diagnostics, of course. Chase had been there for half an hour now without the slightest inspection happening.

"They're awesome. Can I have one?" Kutner asked. He was playing with a laser pointer, and the kitten was chasing the spot all over the table.

"You'll just set it on fire," Thirteen snapped. "Besides, they're Dr. Cameron's, too." The yellow tabby walked on her paperwork, and she shoved it to the side with the back of her hand. He squeaked indignantly and stalked away, tail in the air.

"That was mean," said Kutner, wrinkling his nose, "C'mere, Fluffy." The kitten eyed Thirteen suspiciously, then jumped off the table and crawled into the pocket of Kutner's lab coat.

"I don't like cats," she said flatly.

"Huh. Kind of self-loathing, don't you think?"

"What?" Thirteen's gaze could have turned Kutner to stone.

"Nothing," Kutner said sheepishly, then looked down at the kitten in his pocket and grinned.

Chase refocused his energies on watching House, who was technically holding one of Chase's children in his hand, and Chase thought he should be paying attention before the kitten got tagged with a microchip webcam of some sort.

"I don't know, Chase. Maybe you should be concerned. This one looks like it has a touch of Foreman to it." House brushed down the black tuxedo kitten's tail. "Correction. He looks that way."

"Shut up, House," Foreman snarled from the corner, where he was attempting to read the newspaper and pretend the room wasn't crawling with itty-bitty felines.

"Mew," the ball of black and white fluff said indignantly, and attempted to dig tiny claws into House's hand. House dumped him unceremoniously into Chase's lap, whereupon the kitten immediately decided to scale Chase's shirt. Chase plucked him off and the kitten set to gnawing on his finger with little milk teeth instead.

"Huh," said House. "Like father, like son."

"Uh," Taub said abruptly, gesturing at the remaining two kittens, who had squirreled themselves away into a corner. "Should they be doing that?"

Chase got up to look, his eyes widening in surprise when he saw what was happening. The gray kitten had the calico's ear in his mouth, and she had...oh, dear God.

House snorted as Chase handed Taub the tuxedo kitten and bent down to gently pry the kittens apart. "So, you didn't explain why getting it on with your siblings is a bad thing? Awesome. CAN I HAVE YOUR TWO-HEADED GRAND-KITTEN?"

"That's it, we're _done_," Chase said, irritation coloring his voice. "You're obviously not running any tests, and it'll be time to feed them again soon. Besides, now I need to go home and build some - partitions." He packed the kittens up and took them home, promising Kutner that yes, he could visit, and really could not believe that he envied people who had real children.

**Three Weeks, Two Days**

Chase brought another wet, yelling, squirming kitten to Cameron, who was curled up in bed with two others, wrapped up in warm towels and snuggled against her. She looked beneficent and protective, a blonde Bastet. Which was perfectly fitting, since the kittens generally regarded their mother as a beloved goddess, and Chase as faintly amusing hired help.

"I don't see," Chase said grumpily, "Why I have to have all the washing and you get all the drying."

Cameron raised an eyebrow as she took the pathetically mewling kitten from him.

"I believe _you're_ the one who was supposed to be watching them when they got into the trash," she said dryly. "Next time you'll pay more attention."

Chase nodded and sighed, and went off to the living room to pry the last kitten out from where he was hiding under the couch.

**Four Weeks**

At one month old, the kittens were allowed out of their box and given the run of the guest bedroom. They nibbled solid food, played eagerly with their toys, and purred happily for belly rubs and ear scratches. Fluffy, who as it turned out, did not respond to any other name Cameron tried, slept in the kangaroo pocket of her favorite hoodie. The grey kitten still lagged a little behind the others, but he liked to sit on Chase's shoulder to watch soccer. Both activities, Chase thought, would eventually be a problem of size, like everything else about them.

He would lie awake every night, staring at the ceiling and wondering what they were going to do when it became evident that their apartment was definitely not large enough for two adult humans and four full-sized cats. They were stuck in this lease for a year, and Cameron was still paying off student loans, and it wasn't like they could give any of them away. In addition to the horror that the idea of giving away one's own children provoked, Chase wasn't sure anyone would want a cat that had learned to tap out the channel for Animal Planet on a remote control.

The more pressing problem, however, was the litter box, and the ongoing failure to grasp this concept. Complicated, no doubt, by the fact that regardless of what House might say he and Cameron used an actual toilet, and therefore the kittens were short on role models.

"Here we go," Chase said, plopping the kitten into the litter box. The gray kitten looked up at him like this was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard, and hopped out of the box.

"No, it's box time, come on." Chase picked up again and brushed the kitten's tiny paws in the litter. He stared blankly, and Chase made a digging motion with his own hand.

"That's sweet." Chase looked up to see Cameron leaning against the doorjamb, smiling warmly. The grey kitten mewed and bounded up to her, and then mewed again. Chase wasn't sure what he was saying, but he was pretty sure it was something along the lines of _Mom, Dad has totally lost it._

Cameron responded by picking the kitten up and putting it back in the box, sitting down cross-legged beside Chase. "They're getting so big already."

"Hard to believe it's been a month," Chase said quietly, watching the kitten paw around in the litter. "For that matter, hard to believe he was the runt. He's almost as big as the rest of them now."

"We took good care of him," Cameron said, sounding a little proud. "I mean, this was all so bizarre, but...it seems to be working out." She scooted a little closer to him on the floor, smiling shyly when Chase slipped his arm around her waist.

"Chase," she said, infinite patience in her voice, "That's the hand you had in the kitty litter."

"Oh, God, sorry," Chase spluttered, and snatched his hand back. Cameron snorted with laughter.

"I think I'll live, Chase - Look! He did it!" She clapped her hands together, leaned over and beamed at the kitten. "What a good boy you are," she said warmly. The kitten looked at them blankly for a moment, then climbed out of the box and trotted over to the others to play.

"You realize we're excited about poop," Chase said blankly.

"Afraid so," Cameron replied, and wrinkled her nose. "Now how do we teach them to bury it?" Chase groaned and flopped onto his back, which apparently, was the international kitten signal for "pounce here." Cameron laid down on her side and watched him, grinning like a Cheshire cat herself.

This was _totally_ from her side of the family.

**Four Weeks, Five Days**

Chase thought he was going insane. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it was infinitely more annoying to the cat's owner. The kittens were technically not supposed to be allowed out of their bedroom, but they would cry at the door when left alone and Ferberizing a kitten, much less four kittens, would require a heart of stone and possibly complete deafness. Having conceded that defeat, any last vestige of privacy had disappeared out the window. He couldn't eat, read, or watch television without looking up to find a pair of little blue eyes staring at him, or a little set of claws digging into his pant leg. Kittens popped out of his sock drawer alarmingly, and hid in the clean laundry – except the yellow tabby, who had tried hiding in the dirty laundry and had proceeded to cry for a torturous hour after Chase had accidentally put him in the washer.

"It's not like I turned on the water," Chase had said while Cameron glared at him, cuddling the kitten under her chin. He could have sworn it snickered at him. At which point he had figured that genuine insanity was, in fact, imminent.

Late that afternoon, Chase was reading _Annals of Surgery_ with the black kitten passed out in savasana on his chest when Cameron walked in, smiling warmly.

"How was the doctor?" Chase said quietly, although not quietly enough because the black kitten woke up and jumped onto the floor, joining his siblings in their never-ending game of tag.

"Good," Cameron said, sitting down beside Chase as he settled into place on the couch. "I got the all clear."

"All clear for what?" Chase said, wrinkling his nose.

"What do you think?" Cameron said teasingly. She smiled at him, her eyes sparkling, and plucked the journal out of his hand. Chase felt his libido perk up and recognize Cameron as someone other than an exhausted and occasionally naked roommate for the first time since the whole kitten thing.

"Oh. That." Chase looked at her as she clambered over him, straddling his lap. "Um, is it...safe?"

Cameron raised an eyebrow. "Got any cereal supplies stocked up around here?" Chase shook his head, and Cameron smiled, infinitely cat-like. (Her side. Definitely from her side.) She leaned in and kissed him, and Chase sighed happily, wrapping his arms around her, letting himself get caught up in her and only her for the first time in weeks.

He had just pressed her back into the couch, breathing hard and kissing his way down her neck when Cameron unaccountably froze in place and pushed against his shoulders. Chase made a small noise of complaint, and she nudged him again.

"Chase, come on. They're looking at us." Cameron nodded towards the floor, and indeed, the kittens who were gleefully gamboling about a minute ago were now gazing at them, little heads cocked in varying directions.

"Oh, _now_ you care that there's a cat watching?" Chase asked in disbelief.

Chase had to concede that perhaps he really didn't deserve sex after that.

**Five Weeks, Two Days**

At this point Chase decided that actually, he didn't need Cameron to have sex. He had an imagination and a hand and that combination was just going to have to suffice. The kittens were playing in their bedroom with the door closed, happily attacking a scratching post sent by Cameron's aunt in Philadelphia.

Chase took a deep breath and tried to relax into the bed as he unzipped his jeans. Cameron had slept late and the sheets still smelled like her, a mix of perfume and shampoo and skin that was all he needed to get things started. He closed his eyes and let his libido's greatest hits flicker across his eyelids, from Cameron snapping handcuffs onto his wrists with a wicked smile to the obnoxiously Freudian image of having sex with her on House's desk. And well, Kylie Minogue. Never let it be said he wasn't a good Aussie.

He was just picturing how Cameron would shiver, her rosebud lips parting beneath her blindfolded eyes as he dragged an ice cube against her skin, when he felt a rather distinct draft in the room. Chase opened his eyes, blinking against light that shouldn't have been there. And then, four little paws landed on his chest after a daring leap from the end of the bed.

"Mrow?" said the calico kitten quizzically.

"What the – " Chase scrambled, trying to tug the sheets up to a modest level, which...sort of worked. "How did you – oh my God, can you open _doors?_" The kitten just blinked innocently, and Chase dropped his head back to the pillow with a sigh. The calico curled up into the curve of his neck and shoulder, purring happily. Chase scratched her ears and despaired of ever getting another moment of privacy...without shoving large pieces of furniture under the doorknobs.

**Six Weeks**

By the time Kutner called with an offer to kitten-sit, Chase was so desperate to escape prying kitten eyes that he said yes, without considering whether or not Kutner secretly had plans to raid a sorority house with ultra-cute bait. Cameron agreed that they could use the night out, but as the hour drew closer, she grew nervous.

"You've got our cell phone numbers," she said to Kutner, ticking things off on her fingers, "and our pagers. And the vet's number is on the fridge."

"We'll be fine," said Kutner. Fluffy attached himself to Kutner's leg, as if to affirm this sentiment.

"Let's go," Chase said, steering her towards the door. He tried to look stern, addressing the kittens. "Be good, you guys." The kittens attempted to pretend that they had never misbehaved in their lives, but even Kutner didn't look like he believed them. Chase nudged Cameron out into the foyer, and closed the door behind him, wincing when he heard the slight thud of a kitten running into it. They were about halfway down the path when Cameron looked back and made a little cry of dismay.

Gently, Chase took her hand and pulled her towards the car. "Allison, we can't stay home all the time. I mean, we've got to go back to work soon."

"_Look_ at them," Cameron protested, and Chase's heart sank when he saw the front window of their apartment lined with deeply worried kitten faces. Maybe it was too soon. True, normal kittens might be headed out to new homes by now, but these weren't really normal kittens.

Chase's worries disappeared though, when Kutner clapped his hands or something and they all turned away. Maybe it would be fine after all.

They had a leisurely dinner in town, completely uninterrupted by meowing, a crash from the next room, or attempted cheeseburger theft. No one tried to stick a paw in their gelato. Their time spent canoodling in Palmer Square was not interrupted by anyone getting stuck behind the couch and no one crawled into Cameron's shirt because they'd seen something that scared them on Animal ER. In short, it was everything their evenings out had once been, and now it seemed ever so slightly lonely.

Chase pulled up in front of their apartment building and parked, sitting quietly for a moment.

"Everything's really different now, isn't it?" Chase said quietly. Because it was, even if all they had, in anyone else's eyes, were some dubiously well-behaved pets.

Cameron nodded. "It's not - what I expected," she said, looking at him sideways. And then they both burst out laughing, because expectations had more or less disappeared out the window in the past month, to the point where Chase figured that House would magically become nice one of these days, Wilson would join a biker gang, and Foreman would retire to pursue a new career as an ashtanga yoga teacher.

Chase wiped tears out of his eyes, shaking his head. "Expectations. We should probably give up on those."

"I think so," Cameron replied. She tapped her fingers on the dashboard, blonde hair tumbling over her shoulder as she smiled warmly at him. "I also think that this car has a perfectly good backseat."

Twenty very stimulating minutes later, Chase opened the front door to a suspiciously quiet apartment. He was expecting a chorus of meowing – they tended to be rather nocturnal, after all – and greetings at the door.

"Oh, hey, you're back," Kutner said, looking up from his magazine. "They've been totally good."

Cameron looked like she didn't believe him, and went to open up the bedroom door. Four furballs shot out the door, dragging some sort of long, floppy sausage-shaped toy with them. They looked up at Cameron, wide-eyed and tumbling over their own feet.

"Is that _catnip?_" Cameron spun around, glaring ferociously at Kutner. Chase thought there was a distinct possibility she was going to kill him and eat him.

"Run," he said to Kutner, who grabbed his coat and hurried out the door. Chase hurried over to Cameron and slid his arms around her from behind.

"It won't hurt them," Chase said, "It's just like...too much candy. Or something."

"They're _stoned_," Cameron said in horror, as the black and white kitten rolled onto his back like a puppy looking for a belly rub.

"They're _distracted_," Chase murmured in her ear. Cameron turned to face him, and it only took a few seconds for what he was hinting at to sink in for her.

"They are. So – " She grabbed his arm and tugged him towards the bedroom, dropping her jacket to the floor. "You've got a good opportunity to distract me again." They stumbled into the bedroom, closing - and locking - the door behind them. Chase kissed her warmly, eager to get back to what they'd been up to in the car. He pulled his shirt over his head and felt Cameron's hands at his belt as they tumbled onto the bed. Her breath was hot against his skin as he kissed her neck, and he thought it had to be a very good sign when she whimpered in his ear until she pushed him away, onto his back.

"What now?" Chase asked, "I mean, I bought – you know. Extra protection. Until we know this won't happen again. I'll wear two, if you want."

"Shut up and listen," Cameron pleaded urgently, her eyes fixed on the door. Chase listened, and he had to admit that his heart twisted right around when he heard a bunch of tiny claws scratching at the door, punctuated by plaintive little mews.

"But – " Chase began, and then sighed, because Cameron shot him a dirty look and he knew there were no buts at all. He got up and opened the door, and three blurry fuzzballs zoomed past his feet and clambered onto the bed, where Cameron was already making cooing noises at them. The gray kitten sat at his feet and meowed, demanding a ride because he still wasn't a very good climber, and Chase scooped him up and carried him over before lying down beside Cameron again. They watched the kittens roll around, get lost under a blanket and reappear surprised on the other side, and attack the rumpled bedsheet any time Cameron tugged on it. Chase shifted closer to Cameron, until their shoulders were touching and she could entangle her legs with his.

"I'm sure this is totally better than anything we'd do on our own," Chase said, nodding towards the admittedly adorable chaos happening at the foot of the bed.

Cameron smiled. "If it makes you feel any better, Chase, they hate the shower." She ruffled his hair playfully. "We'll just have to get back to basics."

Chase laughed, amazed by how lucky he was that if something this bizarre could happen, at least Cameron was part of all the madness. He leaned over and kissed her, until a tiny paw bopped him on the nose.


End file.
